﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿d﻿﻿riving miss phakxx﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

June is celebrated as youth month in South Africa. This is due to the fact that the Soweto Uprising, which was led by young people occurred on 16 June 1976.

These are the 5 key things you should know about the historical event.

Forty years after the Soweto Uprising, the same consciousness of Bantu Biko, that sparked the 1976 riots, is once again palpable in the air. His philosophy lives through the struggles of the black youth that are topical today.

The youth of South Africa are confronted with the reality of their blackness. They have been told that ours is a rainbow nation where race does not matter, only merit and ability.

They have done everything we asked of them.

Some have battled through hardship and inferior education to obtain qualifications, yet we don't employ them.

Some young people work menial jobs to get experience, and we exploit them by offering them slave - like internships.

Some spend years vainly applying for funding for their small businesses, and we ask them for collateral, in the form of immovable assets. Huh?

Some go to bed hungry and sleep in the libraries at many of our most illustrious Universities.

Some catch the last train heading home on Metrorail trains at 10pm, because their Afrikaans University schedules exams for English speakers in the evening.

The silent violence of forcing our children to learn in foreign languages is traumatic, and places them at a distinct disadvantage.

Echoes of '76?

Some are blacklisted for defaulting on student loans. This, after dropping out of tertiary institutions due to financial exclusion. We condemn them to joblessness because nowadays even call centre jobs demand a clean credit record.

The doors keep shutting in their faces.

The silent violence they have been subjected to is unspeakable.

Some have given up. Others forcefully break down the doors.

And they burn....

Some just want to sing, drum, rap, make films and express themselves, yet we reject their talent, calling it inferior.

"that keeps them busy; it relaxes their painfully contracted muscles; and then the dance mimes secretly, often without their knowing, the refusal they cannot utter and the murders they dare not commit."

The myth of the rainbow nation is well and truly shattered.

The black youth just can't shed anymore of who they are. Some can barely think in, let alone speak their own mother tongues. They can't assimilate anymore than they have.

Our youth all have one thing in common: they just can't shake off being black.

Our society reminds them of it everyday.

They can't breathe.

Can you?

Eish, this ish is suffocating.

And we haven't even mentioned Black Tax.

Young people are questioning the status quo. They are demonstrating to us just how abnormal our society is.

They tell us in no uncertain terms, that we have become comfortable in our discomfort.

What we must now do is to find solutions to our condition.

This means engaging in deeply uncomfortable conversations, as we seek to understand the extent of what has been done to us as a people.

But we must also forge forward. Drawing from the vast reserves of indigenous knowledge and the education that we have acquired. We must fight for the future and the interests of the African Child.